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COMMUNITY VIEWPOINT: Fox News and Republicans misguided

By Jim FerrellSpecial to the Pahrump Valley Times

Dan Schinhofen was speaking for himself, Republicans and misguided Fox News commentators saying, “When we no longer have any faith or trust in them (Obama administration) we lose faith in the entire system and that will collapse this republic.” Schinhofen failed to mention that he was speaking for a minority of the voters and that our nation rejected their excuse, Mitt Romney, for president this past presidential election when Obama smashed him at the polls.

Thank God Pahrump politicians like Schinhofen don’t run our country. If he were to lose contact with Fox News he would probably be unable to think.

I will show you how unintellectual Schinhofen’s points were. He said “he (Obama) has systematically gone about destroying our international reputation by drawing ‘red lines’ and then ignoring them … most notably with Syria, and now we are on the verge of having a Caliphate set up there.” Obama told Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons in Syria or else. They were removed. Obama, unlike George W. Bush, correctly assessed the Syrian situation and determined it was a no-win for us to intervene militarily. Two of Schinhofen’s Republican leaders, Lindsay Graham and John McCain (both of them failed leaders) went to Saudi Arabia and persuaded the Saudi king to bankroll a rebel group which was supposed to overthrow the Syrian government. Instead they became ISIS and are now fully armed and moving all over Iraq, killing and destroying property.

I assume his comment about IRS refers to the failed attempt by Darrell Issa to get something on Lois Lerner, the former head of an IRS division which determined if so-called charity organizations were too political to qualify for tax exemption. Despite the fact that Issa has wasted millions of our tax dollars on investigations and hearings he has thus far failed to produce one shred of evidence that shows Lerner acted legally.

Schinhofen said Obama “gives them (refugees) food, housing and calls them refugees.” Does Mr. Schinhofen want Obama to disobey the law passed by both houses and signed by George W. Bush in his eighth year as president? This law specifies that especially children coming from farther away than Mexico must be provided for and given a hearing to determine if in fact they are refugees, and if they are they have a right to apply for a residence in the U.S. Moreover, we wouldn’t be in this mess if the Republican congress had acted in good faith and given us an up or down vote on an immigration bill, passed by both parties in the Senate and given a promise by Obama that he would sign it if passed, but speaker Boehner refused to bring it to a vote in the House because there were enough Republican votes for it to pass.

Apparently the Republican motto is “better to let the country go to hell than to allow Obama credit for anything good for our country.”

I will concede that Obama made a mistake by making recess appointments, but that doesn’t make him a bad president.

Mr. Schinhofen complains that very few of our children can read. I would remind him that it was the Republicans who took money away from our schools. If we want good educators we need to pay them enough to keep them and we also need to keep our classes, especially in the elementary grades, small enough so that teachers can give more attention to slower learners.

I agree with Schinhofen that our elected representatives need to defend the Rule of Law and defend our Constitution. Right now we have a supreme court which has taken it upon itself to make laws which override the legislative process.

It has ruled that corporations are people and money is free speech, overruling 200 years of not allowing undue influence in politics with money. In 2000 it denied the state of Florida the right to decide its choice for president and appointed George W. Bush as president. Our 5 right-wing judges are in bed with the Republicans and the corporations which give funds to the Republicans to make laws that benefit only the top 1% and the corporations. It makes one wonder how there could be so many Republicans in Pahrump because I don’t see that many mansions here.

I don’t believe Schinhofen is stupid, but he is misguided. General Eisenhower at the end of WWII required some prominent citizens from Berlin to visit one of the German concentration camps where masses of dead Jews lay and many more so starved they were on the verge of death.

Some of the women fainted, some threw up, others were seen holding white cloths over their faces. They were so shocked and horrified to learn that their heretofore hero, Adolf Hitler, the savior and great leader, so they thought, could have betrayed them.

Something like that could happen to us unless people like Schinhofen can somehow be deprogrammed from Fox News where untruths are frequently broadcast.

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